The Sickest Stories Where We All Learned A Lesson Or Two.

An interesting thing happened at this Saturday's "Sickest Stories". This interesting thing happened twice, actually.

Late in the show, 30 minutes in, when Ratcatcher Juan started telling the first of his two stories, people began to leave. Two different groups, actually. The first group of three left when Juan was barely into his story, but after A.) the revelation that a local high school just fought back a major infestation and B.) the school janitors there had accidentally eaten maggot-infested chicken patty's that they weren't supposed to be getting into. Juan had just finished the revelation that the janitor's had done that, when we all looked up to see the herky jerky exit of three drunk people, two guys and a girl, tottering out of the theater. They didn't say anything. They just left.

Everyone looked at me for a reaction and I laughed it off, "No worries. We got their money. And it's not like they didn't sign up for 'Sick Stories'. If this was called 'Pussyfart, Happy Time Stories' they might have reason to be pissed, but it ain't. Finish the story." And so he did.

An eerie thing happened as Juan was telling these stories. The laughter dried up and the audience was genuinely repulsed by what he was saying. Suddenly, the show was taking them somewhere that they didn't anticipate. This wasn't a funny story about "some fat chick that one of us had screwed". This was a detailed description of how exterminators kill rats and bugs when they take over a place. And the audience was transfixed. At each new revelation, they would groan and moan and shrink back a little bit more.

And they all breathed a sigh of relief when it ended. They'd gone through the worst of it and they'd survived and they were all hoping that we would get back to funny "shit pants" stories. But we didn't.

An audience member on the front row, my friend Jenn actually, yelled out, "Tell them about the homeless guy and the cockroach" and Juan looked at me and said, "Should I?" and I said, "Go for it, man," knowing fully well where this was going. Straight to Hell, actually. Juan launched into his story about he old guy homeless guy whose clothes were infested with all manner of bugs and vermin and right when he got to the 4 inch long American cockroach that lived in the guy's asshole, we heard the tell-tale shuffle of six people in the backrow, shuffling to get out, as quickly as they could.

Once again, people looked at me and I took a drink from my glass and laughed it off. We let them go, too. And we asked the audience directly, "Do you want to hear the rest? Or should he stop?" And the loudest voices shouted back, "Finish the story!" and that's what Juan did.

9 walkouts in total. Late in the show. They all made it past the "Funny Ha Ha" parts of the show, but when it got the "Really, Truly Sick" parts of the show, two different groups met their thresholds, pulled their ripcords and ejected from their cockpits. I suspect that the girls in the groups, all of them blonde, young, suburban girls found themselves facing something that they weren't ready for and pressured their guy-friends to get them out of there. That's just my assessment of the groups, after having viewed them at the beginning of the show.

After they left and we all had a laugh at their expense, the show continued and we all got past the weirdness of the story and the exits. J. Ben Parker closed the show with a hilarious story about banging "the comic relief" at an outdoor drama, in a lake, during a skinny dipping party and we further ended the show on a high note by having Juan use his BB Gun to do a shooting exhibition to shoot standups of rats and cockroaches that I made for him as a friendly wager. (Which he won, actually, even though he didn't knock a single one over - because his bb gun was so powerful, that it blew clean holes right through the targets. I conceded the loss, thanked the audience and kicked them all out.)

After the show, Juan apologized to me for offending my audience but I wouldn't hear of it. He did EXACTLY what he was supposed to do. Tell a Sick Story and let the audience sort it all out. For a few months, I've been thinking that the show was a bit too vanilla, a bit too predictable. Juan sufficiently lowered the bar and took the show to a different place, altogether. A place where we don't want the show to live, but that we will want to visit from time to time. A show called "The Sickest F***ing Stories I Ever Heard" should have a "Cockroaches In The Asshole" story, from time to time.

I've long maintained that a visit to the the theater or the comedy show has been too safe for the audience for too long. Comedy-improv audiences are too secure in the knowledge of what they're getting into. Or of how safe they are, out in the seats of the theater. I think that it's good for some live theater shows to push the boundary, a little bit. In truth, the audience was only in danger of what they could imagine, hearing Juan's stories. And if their reaction was so visceral that they grabbed their date by the arm and said, "Get me out of here, I think I am going to be sick", well, that's as honest and as emotional a reaction as a laugh or a cheer or a boo. A reaction that I'll gladly receive. (Without returning their admission fee, of course. They paid to be entertained and sicked out. They got exactly what they paid for.) It's just even more icing on the cake, that they got to see an actual rat exterminator firing his actual bbgun at actual targets to settle an actual bar bet. That's something that they couldn't have predicted that they were going to see at that show.

I am personally proud that the show got to those fleeing few and they ran out into the night, to get away from the theater. Congrats, kids, you got yourselves one genuine, bonafied adventure and it only cost you ten bucks to make it happen. (Although, if you'd stuck around, you would've enjoyed a pretty neat bbgun exhibition.) I can afford to lose nine kids out of a sixty person audience, without sweating it. They made a full house slightly less full than it already was. I'm cool with that.

After the show, at the bar, Harz, who was working the door for the show related to me what the guy leading the first group had said. Harz said his face was red and the guy looked like he wanted to punch someone, as the other guy helped the girl out of the theater. The big guy looked at Harz, and struggling to express the emotion that he was feeling, said, "This show... man... it's too much! It's just too much, man! This fucking show, man!" and he left. I think that's hilarious.

At my show, everyone gets what they paid for.
Even if they didn't know what they bought, when they handed over their admission fee.
Live Comedy Theater is a little bit dangerous again.
I think that's the way that it should be.

Cheers,
Mr.B



PS. I am working to get a full time lights and sound guy to run the show. My new plan is to have an audio track cued and ready. The next time someone walks out of my show, we'll kick on the disco lights and sing "Na Na Na Na! Hey Hey Hey! Goodbye!" while they skulk out of the room. We'll turn each audience submission into a mini celebration! The next time it happens, we'll be prepared for it!